How to Love a Crazy Job

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s secret weapons

“Never be afraid to start at the bottom. Just get your foot in the door somehow.” —Dawn Smalls, 30, with Kim Molstre, 31

What Kim Molstre does: “I’m in charge of Hillary’s calendar and where she goes,” says Molstre, director of scheduling and long-term planning. “She is amazing; she’s 60 and keeps up a schedule I couldn’t maintain—and I’m half her age.”

Her 13-hour days: “They’re fast-moving and fast-paced. I joke that when you start the day you’ll have an emergency, and by the end of the day you’ll have forgotten it because you’re on to the next emergency. Your job becomes your life. You can’t shut it down.”

How she got the job: “The first time I met her I was super, super nervous,” says Molstre, who had held positions with three other members of Congress and who’d worked on the Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign. “I’d changed my outfit 10 times. We did a little interview, and then she said, ‘I’m so excited that you’re going to do this.’ I got all giddy and started squealing and gave her a gigantic hug. I walked out and got maybe six paces and grabbed my cell phone to call my mom.”

What dawn Smalls does: All eyes are on the January caucuses in Iowa, and the regional political director coordinates that effort from Clinton headquarters in Virginia. Smalls, who works on strategy and planning, says a good day “is bringing in a key endorsement or putting together a great team of supporters.”

Why she does it: “Fifty years from now when you look back and think, Where was I when we were electing the first woman president, I can say I was right here. Where else would I be?”

What her days are like: Things move so fast on a campaign. These are like dog years; in length and intensity, every day is equal to seven days.

How she gets through them: I have developed a bad campaign habit: Juicy Fruit.

Jill Hazelbaker

John McCain’s press pro

“In my career, I’ve sought out successful people and asked for their help. Opportunities come from a willingness to ask.” —Jill Hazelbaker, 26

What she does: As director of communications, Jill Hazelbaker handles reporters’ requests and gets McCain’s message out to the media. She starts her day by reading all of McCain’s press coverage. “That’s 70 to 100 stories.” The upside? “Media people are a lot of fun.”

Where she does all her reading: “I get up at 4:30 and run on the treadmill or ride the bike in the gym and I flip through the clips.”

The only time she’s not on her Blackberry: “In this job, you’re on it from when you wake up until you go to sleep. When I get a manicure, it’s 30 minutes where someone else is playing with your fingernails so you can’t be on your BlackBerry.”

What’s in her very large Cole Haan handbag: “I always have his schedule and a newspaper. I’m pretty obsessed with the classic Kiehl’s lip balm. I always have water with me. You spend a lot of time talking to people very closely so I have Altoids. I carry things for the candidate-a comb, hairspray. I usually have a little lint roller to use if I can grab him quickly.”

What she calls the boss: “I generally refer to him as Senator. It’s more respectful. Occasionally I call him by his first name. He’s a casual guy. He likes young people. He’s up on current movies and, for the most part, music.”

Emily D'Alberto

Rudy Giuliani’s tv expert

I can function in a cab as if I were in my office. I can work anywhere. —Emily D’Alberto, 31

What she does: “If anyone in TV wants something, they reach out to me,” says Emily D’Alberto, the candidate’s director of television. “I get calls at 9 P.M. asking for [an interview] tomorrow at 7 A.M. If a news story breaks, they want to talk to him.”

The frustrations of a newbie: “This is my first political job. If someone had told me I’d be doing this, I’d have said you’re crazy. I was approached by the campaign. As a producer at CNN, I was the person determining how a story would be shaped. Now sometimes I forget I can’t tell [a reporter] this is what they should be asking. It’s been a rude awakening.”

Why she does it: “I love the mayor. I always say Rudy’s my guy. I come from a big Italian-American family. I was [in New York] on 9/11 and witnessed firsthand his leadership on that day and in the days and months afterwards. I wouldn’t have left what I was doing for anyone else but him.”

Sally Canfield and Mindy Finn

Mitt Romney’s influencers

“Make your bosses shine. You’ll be recognized for it—and they will go the extra mile to see you advance.” —Mindy Finn, 26, with Sally Canfield, 36

What Sally Canfield does: “I help the governor develop his message on issues like health care,” says policy director Canfield. “The coolest thing is to have an idea and work it through and then see it in the papers. You see the quotes”—either her own or the candidate’s—“and you think, Oh, that was good.”

Her impact on the candidate: “[We] have very lively discussions. We argue back and forth. Sometimes I have to step back and think, This person could be president and I’m telling him I don’t like that idea.”

What saves her on the road: An eyeshade and earplugs for bad hotel rooms. And whatever makes you feel good, like your favorite pair of pants or a pedicure.

What Mindy Finn does: “The governor is extremely tech savvy,” says Finn, Romney’s e-strategist. “And his sons’ Five Brothers Blog is one of the most popular on his campaign site.” Finn runs Romney’s Web operations and oversees the task of snaring voters, volunteers and donations online.

What she gave up: “I put my new consulting business on hold.” At the start of the job, “I was commuting between D.C. [where she was living] and Romney HQ in Boston, sleeping on a friend’s couch and using my car as a closet.” (She’s since found an apartment.)

Her looooooong day: “I go online starting at 6:45 a.m. and try to be offline by 10 p.m. My team and I look at hundreds of thousands of blogs and news sites every day. I drink a lot of Fresca. I buy groceries and bring them to the office because I eat most of my meals there. We work in the traditionally Italian North End of Boston, so for an indulgence I’ll go get a little cannoli.”

Kathleen McGlynn

John Edwards’ go-to gal

“Always prioritize, be organized and don’t be afraid to make decisions.” —Kathleen McGlynn, 28

What she does: “I manage about 100 people here at headquarters” in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, says chief of staff Kathleen McGlynn. “I’m the go-to person when we’re handling a crisis or figuring out the next steps to take. I keep the wheels turning.”
Her first taste of politics: It was as a newborn: On the way home from the hospital with her, McGlynn’s parents stopped to vote. Her father is mayor of Medford, Massachusetts.

Weirdest not-on-the-resume duty: “I had to chase down one of Elizabeth Edwards’ bras. We lost a bra she’d signed for a breast cancer charity and we spent a couple of days trying to track it down. Every time I sent Elizabeth an e-mail, I cracked up as I was writing the subject line: Missing bra. We finally found it and sent it to Iowa.”

Why she works from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day: “Friends think you’re crazy and the pay isn’t very good, but I feel strongly that I’m doing the right thing because I want to see John Edwards elected.”

What keeps her fueled: “I stop at the coffee shop-I probably visit three times a day-and get a grande skim latte. Every night we have 10 to 15 boxes of pizza in the conference room for staff and volunteers. It’s really hard to eat well on the campaign. Sometimes it’s 3 o’clock and you realize you haven’t had lunch yet.”

Her trick for doing it all: “Not blow drying my hair-when I can get away with it. That saves a full 15 minutes!”

Alyssa Mastromonaco and Eureka Gilkey

Barack Obama’s right hands

“Attitude is everything. I truly believe you can get through almost any challenge in life with a positive attitude and a good laugh.” —Eureka Gilkey, 32, with Alyssa Mastromonaco, 31

What Alyssa Mastromonaco does: Where will Barack and Michelle Obama be at any given moment and how will they get there? Ask Mastromonaco, director of scheduling and advance. “I try to make sure their time is used as efficiently and effectively as possible.” She tries to schedule the candidate so that he travels from east to west, picking up an hour or two as he goes. “I am at my desk almost all the time. A map with pins is behind me,” marking where the Obamas have been.

Her biggest goof: “I [arranged for] a private plane to pick him up and I signed the contract for the wrong day. I got hysterical. My phone rang and it’s Barack and I think he’s going to yell at me. He said he’s on a United flight, and he’ll make it to the event on time. He’s like, it’s no big deal. If you’re not working for someone who you think is a great human being, it’s not worth doing.”

What Eureka Gilkey does: There are 500-plus chapters of Students for Barack Obama, just one of the grassroots groups that the national deputy political director oversees. She spends “hours and hours on the phone” lining up supporters. “If we weren’t human, we could stay in our chairs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Why Obama’s her guy: “He’s very upfront about his Christian faith. He’s very much a family man, and I think he’s a great role model…especially when it comes to being a responsible father. I think that come January 2009, if he’s elected, the future of children of color in this country will change, the thought process will change about what they can be and what opportunities they can have. That’s a powerful message that we send not only to our children but to the world.”

Fred Thompson’s spokeswoman

“Have the confidence to do jobs bigger than your present circumstances. Play big or go home. —Karen Hanretty, 37

What she does: “My mom still doesn’t get what I do for a living,” says deputy communications director Karen Hanretty. “I’m a spokeswoman for the campaign, and also I help craft the candidate’s message. A lot of it is taking complicated issues and making them easier to understand for a sound bite or as a way of communicating with ordinary people.”

Her take on Thompson: “He’s got this bad rap that he doesn’t have fire in his belly. Reporters have created this idea of the Fred they think he ought to be, and he never has been.” Instead, she says, “he is very measured and takes his time to think about what he’s going to say. Fred Thompson rarely overreacts. I don’t think he says many things he regrets, and that’s a virtue. This is a man in charge.”

A job well done: “I’m most satisfied after I’ve done a great live interview. There’s something about being in the chair, your mike is on, you can’t stop and start over, you can’t walk away, and you get the question you weren’t expecting and you just nail it.”

What keeps her up at night: “It’s nerve-wracking sometimes. As a spokesperson, if you help [your candidate], no one will notice. If you harm him”-for example, by saying something that makes him look foolish-“you will spend weeks or months repairing the damage.”

If they could see her now: “I’d like to find the school counselor who thought I wouldn’t amount to much.” Now she has a job “most people never get to do.”